Epiphany's Scourge
by Servant of Fire
Summary: The alternate sequel of Epiphany's Child( I deleted the first attempt). 3 months since Lord Moran loaded Sherlock into the back of an armored truck, and hauled him away from John. Now on the verge of insanity our beloved Doctor Watson must face his own Hiatus, scouring the world, as he promised ,to find Sherlock ,when he is captured ( along with Sherlock) by the Ghost People,
1. Prolouge

**Epiphany's Scourge~**

**Dear Readers:**

**If you happened upon a story entitled "Stopwatch" that said it was the sequel of "Epiphany's Child", this is the alternate version of that same story, which I tried as a sort of expiriment for how to continue this, thought it was going to work, but secretly hated it from the very beginning. If I don't like what I'm writing then I don't expect you to want to read it either!**

**In case any one is wondering, "Epiphany's Child" and "Epiphany's Scourge" will have a final companion. I call the three of them "The Epiphany Triune" but I haven't decided on the name of the third one yet.**

**Hopefully this will go better than the last attempt at continuing what was a difficult story ,emotionally, to write in the first place.**

**Thank those of you who read this for doing so!~ Servant of Fire**

**Prolouge~**

_He feels like he's drowning in Mercy's tears._

_The child had begged him not to leave, of course, he couldn't understand a word she was saying, she was speaking Serbian._

_Now John was under-water, heavy and cold as the sorrow of Epiphany's Child, the little girl that had been merciful to Sherlock as her name had implied, and would forever be the incarnation ,in John's dreaming mind, of that dark place called Serbia, that seemed to be in another solar system, so far away and surreal was that dark hour of his life._

_This moment somehow is even darker. The hours are growing far darker, just as the night does before the Dawn._

_It was Sherlock's firm belief that John himself was Dawn,and proof that there was a God still._

_He's very unsteady in his own faith, sinking as he is into the oblivion of the Indus River. Clawing for the chain to the casket, of the man cast in the river, that he prays to God on High, is not Sherlock after all._

_Sherlock..._

_John has been a soldier. A doctor. A detectives assistant..._

_But now he is a hunter, as feral as the jungles of India._

_He is hunting men...The men that took Sherlock into some unknown darkness,within the shadows of these trees._

_The Indus river swirls about him,as dark and filled with clay, like the swirling of the main-highway that runs through Atlantis, and he feels lost in the great metropolis of the souls of the dead._

_He dives,as deep as he can with what breath is left in him._

_His ribs are aching, like the wings of a stone eagle, trying to fly with his spirit, to tear free from the chain that is his spine. Or like great jaw of a spirit-whale, sounding somewhere through the abyss of his soul, looking for that great oceaninc blackness that was the bonded-brother of his spirit._

_Sherlock,..._

_His heart is throbbing. He is drowning now, but he must know._

_He cracks the coffin open under water._

_There is an ancient man within, some poor old soul murdered,and cast within the chambers of the water, never to be found._

_Sorry for him._

_But it wasn't the man he was looking for, amongst the moving waters of the dead..._

_Sherlock._

_His head breaks the surface,and he gasps. He hears the scream of monkeys far away in the night, fleeing some terror that lives in the jungle,has lived there since before God gave Man light._

_Not Sherlock..._

_His gasps of the heavy night air, are ones of relief, and at the same time foreboding._

_For he had yet to find where he truly was..._


	2. Chapter 1:Welcome to a World on Fire

**Chapter 1: Welcome to a World on Fire~**

"_Jangalera aguna haya! Phayara! Apanara jibana,tomara santanadera jan'ya bhaga!" _

Sherlock is tearing through the jungle as fast as his long,slender legs can take him, high- cheekbones lashed and bleeding, like a cheetah's marks, in scarlet lines, from the chastisment of the undergrowth.

He is screaming at the top of his lungs in Bengali, saying something along the lines of "The jungle's on fire; run you imbeciles!"

He passes a boy,and screams at him, voice nearly gone,

"_Apani badhira? Phayara! Jangalera madhye! Dure ekhana theke pana!"_

Finally the boy made sense of the strange white man's shrieking,and took to his heels shouting,

" _Baba! Baba! PHAYARA!"_

The smoke is catching up with Sherlock, like a Dark Horse come to take him back to the Hell from whence he has just escaped.

" _No..."_ he thinks.

"_Now that Moran's dead-NEVER saw that coming did you,Sherlock?- but ,anyway, now that this business is over, I've got to relocate John,and get him OUT of here!"_

The image of the look on John's face ,as he was torn from his arms, has haunted him for 3 months.

The absolutely voracious desperation to get him out of this situation, get him back to London safe, has likewise been that vicious motivator that kept him alive through the torments of Sebastian Moran.

Torments that went by a book left by none other than James Moriarty. It was called, "Jimmy's Magic Book" or "The Methods of Properly Tormenting One Sherlock Holmes".

Sebastian had followed it down to the "yod and tittle".

And had regretted it deeply. Warred with it...And in the end...

The torment meant to break Sherlock had driven Sebastian Moran insane.

Maddened that he could become so in-humanly cruel, and worse, love it to pieces.

And so he had put a bullet through his brain, to go and be with his master, and Sherlock was rid of him thus.

And now with no anchors left, it was finally time to sail the ship of Moriarty's Network, right into the Iceberg of Lawfullness (represented by one Mycroft Holmes).

Sherlock hadn't spoken to his elder brother in God knew when.

Realizing he was the one that sent John into this HELL ,hadn't encouraged his desire to speak with him either.

He had promised to keep John safe,and then sent him into the fire...

Speaking of fire...

"For God's sakes,people, run!" Sherlock started shouting in English, darting around trees. He heard a tiger shriek in rage and agony,and looked back.

There were flare guns tied to the tips of the tails of at least 30 starven tigers.

Sherlock's jaw-dropped...

"Now I can get you for animal cruelty too!" he shouted at the dead man ,who's voice was always at the back of his mind...

" _Oh Sherlock...I am going to miss our little game..."_

Sherlock closed his eyes,

"Assuming that we are _ever _going to call a Game Over..."he hissed, and just then his knees gave out_


	3. Chapter 2: A Flaming World We Share

**Chapter 2: A Flaming World We Share~**

"DOES ANYBODY IN THIS BLOODY COUNTRY SPEAK ENGLISH!" John shireked, and it echoed off some crumbling wall in Mumbai.

Hundreds of little eyes, of the orphans of this city, turned his way. With a sinking feeling John realized Sherlock would have learned their language relatively quickly. Sherlock would have recruited them as "Homeless Network", probaby.

Sherlock...

John is a soldier, soldier's don't slide down their backs against a wall,and crumple in a heap in the alley,and cry themselves stupid.

Which is what he _wants _to do.

But John, in the end, is a soldier. And the more backed into a corner he gets,the more viciously he fights.

He can't understand a word of what anybody says to him. He can't find any one who can understand him either. What is his plan?

He leans against a wall,to think, cleaning his gun.

Right, he still has one ,from the cache in Serbia, and his failed resistance attempt...

_"Oh, John,you are practically a cave-man. You had ONE task, find Sherlock and bring the poor boy home. And where do I find you? Behind an Indian brothel, cleaning your gun,and screaming at the natives like a lunatic."

John's head swiveled to where Mycroft stood, disguised as a Hindu priest, head shaved clean bald for the task, with tiny glasses,and hena tatooes,complete with long oarnge robe.

In a strange mix of delight,and wanting to punch him senseless,John bowed over cracking- up,

"Oh, oh forgive me -your nibs! Wait till I tell Sherlock,that I met the Queen of England behind a brothel in Mumbai! Will make the whole bit about the sheet,and not wearing pants while sitting on your sofa ,look lady-like!"

Mycroft's lip formed a flat-line,as straight and stiff as a school-master's ruler,and he nodded curtly,

"Right, _about _Sherlock...John Watson, you had ONE job."

"Oi, you could have furnished a bloody plane. Quick in, quick out, just like you do all the time. Or else you can just be patient -The rest of us have to make the trip from Serbia to Mumbai on foot, by car, heck even a rubbish compacter, or any other way we can!"

"Rubbish compacter?!"

"You don't want to know, you don't need to know, if you need to know then you probably _already _know, so let's not waste time. Point is your little brother is in the hands of Sebastian Moran,-the last big fish in the whole pond-and God knows -God _only _ knows-"

John's palor suddenly makes a gargoyle's complexion look baby-fine.

"Please..."Mycroft moaned. John puffed a shaky little puff of air:

"Last time I was close was the border of China, they took a detour. After that, what Moran was doing to him drove him mental-drove _Moran_ mental I mean, if the rumors are true. That was at least 2 weeks ago, I stole-away aboard a south-bound train after that,and ended up here. Think he's in the jungle..."

"You're ...dare I say...actually doing world's better than my people. They could only trace him as far back as Kosovo that short detour they made..."

"So see, I am DOING my job, boss." John chambered the gun, as if ready at a moments notice to use it.

"Where'd you get that, then?"

"Oh, a little kid in Serbia was being made to parade around a church ,waving it around in the air, guarding Sherlock's prison...I took it off her hands,..."

"So ,you actually got CLOSE to Sherlock, but weren't able to recover him."

John got quiet...

"Lord Moran tore him out of my _arms..."_

Mycroft looks as if he has just been slapped.

"There is a hole in this story, as large as the one evident in your heart. Tell me, why would a soldier of the Crown allow that one individual that was more endeared -and God knows how?!- than all the comrades of Afghanistan, to be taken out of your grasp, when you had just received him to your arms from out of his grave?"

John's turn to look slapped,

"Because Sherlock Holmes did what he does best. Bargained ...for my life..."

Mycroft closed his eyes tight,and let a heavy breath,

"Dear God..."

"Yeah, I'm sure it's worse than you're even afraid of. I heard rumors of a book...A book Moriarty wrote, a sort of curiculum for how to torture him...sufficiently.

And ,of course, you know _why_ he's allowing himself to be tormented, in the first place. We know Sherlock,we know he's capable of getting himself out of a pinch if he pleased..."

Mycroft nodded,"He's there because he _chooses _to be there..."

"Of course, because he can never be made to do something without his choice..."

"He's there because he is protecting us..."Mycroft swallowed a large lump in his throat.

"Ah ,so you are just as clever as him, well done."

Mycroft looked at John now ,with glassy eyes.

"You've followed him to India...Tell me ,where is he now?"

John swallowed, "The jungle...I need a guide. I came to Mumbai to find someone who could take me to the "Ghost People"..."

Mycroft nearly choked.

"What?"

"Did you say the _Ghost People?"_

_"_You can't tell me that you-Mycroft Holmes-are afraid of ghosts...or people...or both..."

"Oh dear, naïve, little John...When I said you didn't know what you were getting yourself into ...I meant it..."

John sighed, trying to be patient, "Look, this flaiming world is big enough for the both of us. You going to help me ,or not?"

"I'll get you a guide,and then I have to pull out. You have no idea what sort of a risk this is..."

John bowed his head, "You know, I'm not actually as stupid as you think..." he muttered.

He wasn't concerned with any risk,no matter how steep.

All he could think about was Sherlock ,in the back of that armored truck, being hauled deeper and deeper into the mysterious ,winding jungles of India...


	4. Chapter 3: When You Wake to Flames

**Chapter 3: When You Wake to Flames~**

Sherlock wakes up, and the first thing he is aware of is smouldering.

He groans,and tries to move. Tries to join the action around him, though he isn't sure what his place is in it. Should he fight, should he flee? Who is that speaking?

But this is not his battle. He is laying in the ashes, of the Gehena of the trees. A great Armageddon, bringing about the end of the Ancient Jungle.

He lays in the smouldering bones of bamboo, and feels his head throbbing with the lack of clean air. He feels like he has given up his soul,in the wheezing coughs that have brought about his awakening.

He remembers suddenly that he was running, and his knees gave out.

His knees gave out,because he was hit in the back by a falling tree. His shoulders now throb,and the agony of this, may have also been why he fell into blackness.

But the tree that has so wounded him, is also that which saved his life, for it burned,and he was spared.

And once more he thinks that there must be an omnipotent, omniscient,Designer of the Universe, for who else could organize a tree to fall on him preciscely when he needed it to,and not a hundred killing blows before then?

And who else could have given life to the venerable John Watson?

He was coming for him. He promised. Sherlock smiled.

Years of torture, and the climax of the last episode thereof ,that had driven Sebastian Moran to suicide (for being the one to ruthlessly administrate it) passed before Sherlock's eyes,and he didn't even bat a lash.

It all had been taken on John Watson's account. And the intensity of the horror and pain it had caused, paled in comparison to the love he had for the man.

He was coming for him. Forget torment too brutal to put into words!

He hears voices in the woods,and begins to sit up.

They have found him.

Sherlock doesn't feel that normal shiver of fear ,splitting his spine open, like lighting down a chord, as he usually would.

He feels like he must find a way to keep John from coming, though the fantasy has in part, been keeping him alive.

"Smoke signals are out of the question..." he thinks.

And just then the Ghost People turn on him. Their painted faces, masks made out of the frontal part of the skull of those poor souls they tormented to demise, are glowering in the darkness.

"So, the teachers of Jim Moriarty have come for my soul..."

One laughs, glad that they have found him at last.

"Yes, to finish it Sherlock...To finish his assignment..."

"You don't have to sound so disappointed in him..."

"In the end, he was a fool. But you...you are clever enough to die like this ,aren't you? Clever enough to make bargains for your little friend, when he comes...?"

"When you go throwing him into the mix, I can be infinitely more clever than you can imagine..."

"We can imagine quite a bit, Mr. Holmes..."

"Then I will come in the name of James Moriarty,and Sebastian Moran-and for the love of John Watson."

He got to his feet, and realized that he towered over the Ghost People. Who glowered up at him, smiling behind their masks.

Sherlock knew he was going to be tortured in ways that made Jim and Sebastian both look like amateurs, and he was suprisingly ok with this.

Because if he was, John wouldn't be...

And so he tried to put him out of mind, tried to imagine that he had lied,and wasn't coming to save him.

But John was only a little bit down stream...


	5. Chapter 4: Wait For My Signal

**Chapter 4: Wait For My Signal~**

His guide had abandoned him in the heart of the jungle.

"Forgive me, _janaba__."_ the little man had said. "Forgive, but _they _walk there..."

John now stood all alone in the far end of a jungle that had been burned to the last crisp of hell, thoughts floating back to that conversation...

"Who?"

The strange young man in the scarlet turban's eyes were growing as wide as the silver dollars Mycroft had paid him to accompany John with...

" _Pretatma..."_

John blinked, brows knitting to show how little he cared, " 'Pre-Dated Mama'?...Speak English,mate!"

The young man licked his lips, "The Wraiths...The Ghost People, _janaba__..._They are worse even than the Slave-Master...And they will be only more vicious now that the Slave-Master is dead."

"Moran...is dead?"

The man looked terrified that the name had been mentioned,and nodded.

"How?When? Listen,...he had in his custody...someone I love more than you can possibly imagine..."

The young fellow cringed, "Your lady, one of his ...slaves? I am sorry!"

"No,-no he had my brother..."

His eyes flashed in realization, "Oh...Oh God above! You...are the Detective's brother!...The one he was protecting..."

How did this kid know that? John didn't have time to find out..Because the boy was grabbing him by his shoulders, and was ashen, trying to tell him something...

"The Slave Master...he..." the kid swallowed,and nodded wildly, as if what he was telling was a sin just to speak out,

"He tortured the Detective...so brutally, his guilt was too much to live with...And so... the Slave Master killed himself. The Detective escaped to my village,and told my family his story. I lead him into the jungle..."

The boy looked around in growing fear.

"He was coming here to settle a scour with the Ghost People, the teachers of the Boss-Man-Whose-Name-No-One-Ever-Says...They will come for my father ,...my village...if I tell you where they are...But..."

The boy swallows hard, "I will say this only. Look for the Eagle, painted in blood."

John nodded,and then the boy turned and fled into the dark green from whence he had come.

John had been left there to process what he had been told.

That was 3 hours ago.

And now he had strayed far enough into the dark green shadow to smell the fire,and know that he swiftly approached a hell only Sherlock Holmes would dare to go into by himself.

* * *

John's plan was probably suicide,but then the whole mission was doomed from the beginning ,anyhow.

And Sherlock had waited for his signal long enough.

John knew that now was the time to give Sherlock the hope he had long been waiting for. It was time to bring this to an end. He would start this war. He would bring the Ghost-People to him.

"Hello, I think it's time for a séance. Light some candles, that's what people do..." he said to the listening trees.

He lifted the flare gun he had insisted to Mycroft that he needed.

And fired it into the air.

He heard sharp ,chittering laughter,and voices in the forest,and knew that they would be coming for him now.

He put his hands up ,in only feigned surrender, and smiled,

"Coming to see you,Sherlock, very soon. Did you miss me?"


	6. Chapter 5: I Am Writing in the Smoke

**Chapter 5: I Am Writing in the Smoke~**

Sherlock woke up in the back of a jeep.

He'd been drugged by the Ghost-People after he'd agreed to play their game. Presumably, so he wouldn't be able to find the way to their Secret Village.

But how is one going to be able to distinguish a path through an desolate-charred jungle? He concluded then, that they did it just for the fun of watching him convulse under the vile influence.

He sat up,as far as his chains would let him. Looked at his reflection in one of said chains.

When he was taken to the torture lab, they'd trimmed his hair, and shaved him. He'd been being shaved by Sebastian's stylist, so that he would appear most like his normal self in the photographs he'd taken of his torment.

He called it the "Year Book" and he was planning on sending it to Mycroft soon. With his suicide, Sherlock wondered if Mycroft would ever see that book.

Hang the book, would he ever see Mycroft again? He found that he actually missed him, manically.

He looked up at the smoke-veiled sky. His world had been bleak, ever since that long-gone day in London, when he was standing on a roof-top, touching that bleak sky.

How easy that felt now, falling off that building. Even though he'd been nearly cut in half by the same apparatus that had saved his life...

How easy that was in comparison to the years of wars and torments he had endured, all for the love of John Watson.

He smiled when he realized that ,after the demise of the Ghost-People, the Web would be officially unraveled, and Moriarty finally stopped.

He and John could go home...finally.

He was smiling to himself, coming as close to a day-dream as Sherlock Holmes ever comes, a very carefully calculated plot for smuggling John back to England(he would have to locate him first ,of course) when he saw, away in the smoke,the bright of a flare gun shot in the air.

He sat up,as he saw another flare, glaring against the smoke, pale like the dust kicked up by the Horses of Apocalypse.

"I AM COMING...FOR YOU."

He saw the letters written in bright flashes that flickered off the trees.

Once you ruled out the impossible,(which was that he had imagined it), whatever remains, however improbable , must be true.

John had kept his promise, and was coming for him.

How to signal him? Tell him he should turn back, that he was walking into a trap?

Sherlock smiled..._No. _he thought.

_No,let him come...You'll need each other to get out of here alive. If they threaten his life, bargain for him like you did in Serbia..._

Suddenly he was laughing hysterically, because the messages continued,and he thought him to be devilishly clever, using the fog against itself, to project his message(even Sherlock wasn't sure how he was doing it)

"I AM COMING...HOLD ON..."

Sherlock had to signal him back,somehow.

He dug around in the back of the jeep, fighting against his chains, until he also found a flare gun.

He pointed it,and shot it at the air,and his captors suddenly swooped on him, to drug him ,and beat him,and otherwise silence any attempt he might make at escape.

But far away in the smoke, John saw his reply,and burst into laughter and tears, because he was alive,and aware enough to reply...


	7. Chapter 6: I'll Be With You Soon

**Chapter 6: I'll Be With You Soon~**

They howled like jackals at a wraith-moon. They came from every corner of the cinders of a once breathing forest.

Even though the air was baptized in the cold spirit of death,and Macaw's, clothed in feather's that were the envy of Yosef BenYisrael's favor,fled from their footsteps, like phantoms from the dawn;...

Even though the bones of the ancient jungles gnashed like teeth and plead with God to put and end of Them, even so, John was not afraid.

They could tear him limb from limb,and would, but he was not afraid.

He had made a promise, to scour the world, and put Sherlock back together again, even if he had to pry ever piece from the teeth of demons.

Today he would keep that promise.

He cast the smoking- out flare on the ground, along with his gun. Wouldn't need it now, the war he would fight would be with his bare hands.

* * *

" _Anseo ta se! _" a voice spoke in Irish Gaelic, low and menacing ,into the mist:

"_Anseo ta se! An amadan bheadh a shabhail ar an Bleachtaire damanta ...Trua...No in ait, mo mhac, an trua duinn. Ta ar gcuid oibre criochnaithe beagnach..."_

Out of the darkness stepped a man. He had on a long black cloak, like they wore in olden days, and about his collar were dozens upon dozens of golden chains, each one holding a key at the end.

His face was pale, painted a light blue with ashes, and natural dye drawn from plant juices. Over his face he wore a large piece of human skull, on a little circlet made of gold. He had more tatoos than a millionaire could afford, and ,looking closer, John could see they were the same hena style, washable- ink kind that Mycroft had in his disguise.

Under his cloak, the man wore black cargo pants, and had chains hanging off of them, hundreds at least. There were little ash trays woven into these chains, and John didn't want to know why, or what sort of ashes he had put in them...His lips were painted as black as his pants and his cloak, and he wore no shirt, just hundreds and hundreds and _hundreds_ more gold chains, that were braided with barb-wire,and leather cords. His lips were pierced, a hundred tiny gold rings across the bottom, and silver for the top,and when his lips were closed, they meshed,and looked like rabid foam frozen in metal.

There were bronze caps put on over his teeth, that made him look as though he indeed had fangs. The whites of his eyes had been injected with an ink that made them a violet color all the time, and he had in contacts that made his irises neon blue.

About the hem of his cloak were human skulls, on chains, and the top parts of them were chiseled out, and filled with wax, and had wicks braided into them ,that were lit, so as he drug jack-o-lanterns about with him wherever he did roam. His shoes were tall black boots, that had steel spikes on the toes.

His hands were braided with steel chords,that had nails holding them together, and in places they purposefully pierced his skin, and blood had dried, and they were woven with tiny bulbs the size of Christmas lights, that glowed a deep purple, minature blacklights, and they reflected off of his blood,and off of the pain he had chosen to make himself more intimidating, and over all of this were ancient Hindi moon- knives across his knuckles, carved out of a dog's jaw.

"Ok, Thin Lizzy, so let's just get straight to business ,then? First off , you speak English, right? Please say you do, because only one other person I have met today could speak English, and he barely had enough of a vocabulary to order water. Ok, well, I'll assume you can speak English, then, right,- that bit cleared up-WHERE IS SHERLOCK HOLMES?!" John gasped, exasperated.

The man seethed, blew out of a cheap cigar, and John blinked.

"You must be incredibly stupid ,little man, coming here. You aren't afraid? "he said, in a very thick Irish accent.

John's face was stone, "You don't seem very frightening, Thin Lizzy?"

The man laughed, a hard laugh, "You...don't find _this _ frightening?"

"No, I find it to be out of date. You do realize Halloween was months ago?"

The man chuckled, throat rolling with the crackling hoarseness of one who practically drank smoke.

"You ,obviously don't know who I am..."

John smiled, bitterly, "Oh, no, I _know _who you are. You're the guy who took Sherlock, after Moran blew his own brains , and you're the guy who's gonna take me to him, so we can square this, once and for all! "

"Who says?" the other man was shaking with amusement now.

John's brows drew up mysteriously,and suddenly, he was smiling broadly, and giggling, not the giggling of merriment, or even the kind you hear when somebody finds something funny, (but can't laugh too loud 'cause they're at a crime scene). It was a sound like machine gun fire's resonance, hard little snapping laughter, ...pure mockery.

"Oh...hohohohohoho, mmmm." John rubbed his nose, and started laughing all over again,

"You obviously don't know _me, _my dear little punk. Ok, do yourself a favor...Take me to Sherlock...and let's square this. Or else...just ask, and I'll make this a WHOLE lot more fun...Fyi, under all that get up your bones are still soft enough to break!"

John cracked his knuckles ,ready for a fight.

The Ghost-People were actually floored.

" Ach, but you..." their Leader, the one John had been talking to gasped,

"How could you be anything special?, your hair sticks up like a hedgehog's on top!"

John popped his neck,

"Here's a lesson ,mate, and you and me are prime examples. NEVER judge a book by its cover..."

The man smiled, "You know I like you...Ok, I'll let you into my Kiddie Park ,then. I'll let you see Sherlock...But you aren't gonna like what I've done to him, mate."

John nodded, "Lead the way." he snapped, swinging his shoulders,and following the Ghost-People through the smoke.

" _I'll be with you soon, Sherlock..."_he thought, praying he'd hold on just a bit longer...


	8. Chapter 7: And So We Meet Again

**Chapter 7: And So We Meet Again...**

That was the longest walk of John's entire life. Following the tracks a jeep's wheels had made through the ashes. Following in step with these Black -Magic punks.

Black Magic punks that were intent on conversation.

"So, earlier, when you came here from wherever else in the world you were floating around ,like so much pollution,..."The Leader began,

John was distracted by the frantic chirping of a bird, "Doctor?" the man asked again,

"Yeah, right?"

"I'm assuming you got my clues...the bodies...?"

John remembers a cold and frightening night a few weeks back, when he dived into the Indus River, scrambling for a casket he was convinced contained the mutilated remains of his best friend.

"That...was you then?" John asked, trying to forget that horrific night. When he had clawed his way out of the river, he had collapsed on his knees behind a tree,and sobbed, with relief that it was not Sherlock, but also from the brutal aching loneliness that desperately needed him back...safe and sound.

"Yep, twas me. ...You know, I taught Seb and Jim all they knew. We were a gang, back in Dublin, when we were "wee laddies". They called me Teach. Then Jim got all radical, and Seb being his best mate, they decided to break off from us, becoming the chief executives of organized crime the world over. I thought that was a bit too boring. I prefer ...theme parks."

"Oh, Theme parks? I'm assuming you don't mean the "candy-apple-ferris-wheel-win-a-stuffed-bunny-for-your-date"kind?"

"Oh, no I mean the kind like up ahead..."

* * *

John passed through what looked like two old gates,and a wall made in mud bricks. There were large stone carvings of creatures, both mythical to the Hindi religion, and biological.

In the center of the path, like a large welcome sign, was a huge totem pole, with an eagle, woven out of strips of bamboo,that was stained a dark cherry color around the 'feather' tips, as it's top.

Lashed to the eagles chest was a man, raven head bowed over his chest.

John felt ecstasy hit him harder than an adrenaline rush in the heat of combat. At the same time, horror struck his stomach like a viper bite, anticipating the worst possible thing unimagineable...

It was Sherlock!

Suddenly, John was fighting tears, and before the Teacher could say anything, before any challenges or bargains could be made, before the next words even left the magician/tormentors mouth, John was climbing the totem pole.

Frantically scrambling up welded-in metal handles, frantically reaching shaking hands.

Finally got to his feet, and was so overcome with emotion, he had to refrain from kissing them,not wanting to startle him or make him think he'd lost his mind. Had to make him believe he was totally in control of this situation,and would get them out safe and soon...

He climbed higher, till their faces were nearly touching. Sherlock's hair was now level with his nostrils,being that his head was bowed on his chest,and he was ,actually, as scary as his limp pose had looked from the ground, only asleep. Said hair smelled just like the cinders of the jungle, and weird chemicals. Right, they had most likely used drugs along with all their other methods of torture...

John reached a shaky hand to Sherlock's high marble-like cheekbones, and caressed his face. Slowly, the tortured man, began to stir from his first deep sleep in years. For once having rested in the hope that his brave friend was coming to save him. He gave a shudder, feeling the hand on his face,and knowing that he woke from a dream to the truth.

Slowly he raised his head, and silver-green eyes were laughing,and astonished all at once, like the young soldier when he's told that the war is over.

"John?!"

His voice was so quiet it was almost inaudible, as faint as the sound of a moth's wings scraping the air.

"Hey!" John laughed, and broke into tears...and Sherlock smiled a tiny glorified smile, as if he just _knew _it. Exonerated ,like a child for his faith in Santa Claus, come Christmas morning.

"And so we meet again...I knew you were coming..."

John laughed through his tears, and, unable to control his emotion entirely, pushed Sherlock's hair back out of his face,and kissed him in the middle of his forehead.

Sherlock smiled contentedly at this...and coughed hoarsely, hard enough to nearly crack his ribs, having been exposed to more of the smoke than John cared to think about.

John held their foreheads together and sobbed, and Sherlock wriggled a hand free of his ropes,and cupped the side of John's head in it, fingers running through the golden strands of hair, that looked like wheat fields in minature ,flowing in the wind.

"How did you even get here?"

"Oh I begged , I borrowed, I stole! I told you, I SCOURED the world. Every hour that Moran had you, I was only a step behind. And when I wasn't stepping, I was on my hands and knees, and I would crawl.

I climbed mountains, I swam rivers...And I never gave up on you...I promised..."

Sherlock laughed, and the living breath of his nostrils blew up in John's face,and he might as well have inhaled some kind of drug, so euphoric he suddenly was, to feel his life in vapor.

"I believed you...And I waited...And I fought, just like you told me, and I SURVIVED. And now the Web is all but broken, save there were a few flies in it..."

He said, indicating the gang gathered at their feet.

"They're no match for the two of us..."John laughed,and Sherlock hummed, falling silent.

"Any plans?"

"Working on a bargain with them..."

"Right..."

Another hard cough.

"Oh, guess who I found behind a brothel in Mumbai?"

"His Majesty the Queen of England?"

And they both laughed like children,and John kissed Sherlock on the face a second time, so over-joyed, so uncaring that they were in the hands of tormentors capable of rendering them something less than human.

"Did he have any advice for you?Or, I don't know, a PLANE?!" Sherlock muttered, sounding disgusted.

"For a few silver dollars, he got me an interpreter, that could BARELY speak English..."

Sherlock rolled his eyes, "You'd think the Crown could at least afford an English-Bengali dictionary?"

The two of them broke down laughing again,and suddenly crying, until the Teacher shouted,

"Alright, you've chatted with your beau; now it's time for business!"

And one of the gang members were sent up to haul them both down...


	9. Chapter 8: The Games We Play For Freedom

**Chapter 8: The Games We Play For Freedom~**

Teach sat in the "client's chair" and Sherlock and John were lashed to opposite facing poles to discuss the "cases" that he had made for them.

"You know, I really can't decide what sort of game we should play?"

"How about a game that leads to our release, huh?" John asked, thrashing. Sherlock looked heaven-ward, thoughtfully.

"I'd have to agree with the doctor, that seems like the best sort of game for us to play."

Teach laughed hoarsely, whistling through his teeth.

"Oi, and won't that be the most challenging sort of game! I love it; I'm open to suggestions!"

There was silence,and Teach leaned forward, menacingly,

"You...you obviously don't know me ,very well ,do you? I'm not like Jim, nothing 's easy with me, boys. This will be hard. Bloody HARD. You'll be asking to be sent to Hell for some sort of reprieve."

"Oh , now you've said it..."Sherlock smiled as if he was relishing some thought.

John looked at him in confusion,and then it registered. Sherlock was going to trick this master in the art of torture, into letting them go the easy way. John eased into his seat, and held his breath. Even for Sherlock Holmes, this would be no mean feat.

"What are you on about?" the man howled, flummoxed.

"You said you were open to suggestions. And now you've had a brilliant, an absolutely _brilliant_ idea ,that you just so happened to voice, and I had the fortunate misfortune of over-hearing. So here's my suggestion:"

"Wait now, just because I said I'm open to suggestion, doesn't mean you were _supposed _to give me pointers on how to torment you?! It doesn't work that way ,normally. You'd have to be a bleeding pyschopath! Matter of fact,people are usually covered in tears, snot,and vomit by now."

"Oh, but you obviously don't know _us, _do you?(It's high-functioning sociopath, by the way). Anything you can do, someone already probably tried. No ,you want to be creative. So, here's my suggestion:

Build us a hell."

John looked over at him, nervous and amazed all at once.

"A hell -maze, here in the burning remains of the jungle. If we escape it, you give up chase of us, we go free. If we don't, well, you have your reward..."

Teach drew another puff of one of his cheap cigarettes, that made John's stomach churn.

"You know, in another life Sherlock Holmes, I think you would have made a fine criminal mastermind. Or maybe a politician."

"They're usually both."

John wasn't sure if he should be disturbed,when Sherlock and his tormentor ,shared a rolling bout of laughter over this joke.

"Well, then ,boys, I'd better get to work. Already got some ideas forming in the old noodle. Like I said, Jonny-boy,- theme parks. I think I'll call it the _Scourge._"

With that ,he was gone.

Sherlock leaned back with a heavy puff...

"Sorry ,John, but the possibility of our survival from any other outcome was next to nill."

"Sorry? That was BRILLIANT."

"Really?"

Sherlock gave John a quizzical look.

"I think in another life you might have had charisma. And tact. And people skills. The way you had him laughing in the end, I think, in another life, you may have been a comedian!"

"I think you need to shut up now, John. You 'll need to let oxygen get to your brain cells ,as much as possible, so you can think clearly enough to out-smart whatever he sets on our plate."

"Ok..." John laughed.

A silence followed.

"Sherlock?"

"Mmmm?"

"You're alive..."

"For now..."

They shared a smile. Tommorow didn't matter now. Whatever happened next, they had lived to keep the vows they'd made one another, and despite all the horror that got them here, they felt oh-so-very good about that.

Come hell or high water, they would continue to live by those vows,and that stability gave tommorow its strength...somehow.


	10. Chapter 9: The Road I Walk For You

**Chapter 9:The Road I Walk For You~**

"Welcome to hell, lads."

The following morning they stood on the edge of the burning jungle, staring out into the maze that the _Scourge _ of the Ghost People was.

John swallowed what felt like a stone. Sherlock stood beside him, eyes filled with silent angst, but lips curling in a tiny smile.

"What's so funny, Holmes, you psycho.?" the Teach asked after a moment of Sherlock's nearly-mute chuckling.

"Oh, I just..." he sniffed, "I'm just admiring your work."

He leaned close to John. "Freedom is only just as far away as your mind can reach." he muttered.

The Scourge was no more than a great maze of poison misters, like those they encountered in the H.O.U.N.D case.

"Well, boys, let me just say that India is filled will all sort of goodies, the like of which you two have never even stretched your imaginations out to. I have developed a toxin, that even I, with my overly critical attitude towards my work, swear to you, I lose my breath marveling at its sheer,...perfection."

"By which you mean it's going to be very pleasant/not so pleasant for my friend and I?" John asked, wondering if this would be a repeat of Baskerville, or worse?

As if reading his thoughts, the Teacher smiled,

'Every situation that you ever felt terror and pain in in life, will follow you into my hell. But it will be magnified, it will be amplified. It will be exaggerated, and horrific fancies will also follow. And if you don't keep to your head, and mind your feet, you just might be lost in it forever."

"We'll be certain to send you a postcard." John snapped, and Sherlock laughed.

"Ah, it's good to be back on the winning team!" he sighed contentedly, clapping a hand on John's back.

"So, you think, honestly, you're on the winning team, Sherlock?" Teach asked, arms folded, brows cocked.

Sherlock smiled, "Yeah!" he growled, almost inaudibly.

The Teach rolled his eyes, "Well, I'mma get out of the way, and let you lads enjoy your stroll. Be sure and write."

"You should've given John a computer, and then you'd have blog updates!"

Truthfully, The Teacher had never met anyone like Sherlock Holmes and John Watson. Eagerly, he climbed to his lookout fort high in a tree, to watch and see what they would do.

Sherlock turned to John.

"I suppose I owe you an apology for getting you into this mess..."

"Apology not accepted."

Sherlock looked crest-fallen, and John delivered a light punch to his stomach,a grin teasing his lips.

"Because there isn't any need for it. There's not a road I wouldn't walk for you..."

Sherlock clutched his stomach with a soft grunt and smiled. Then slowly, he stood up straighter, looking into the darkness of the jungle.

"Last one to be eaten by the Hound's a sissy!" he snarled,and took off running,into the man-made mist.

John let out a heavy puff,and took off after him.


	11. Chapter 10: Though It Runs Through Hell

**Chapter 10: Though It Runs Through Hell~**

John's feet were as light as smoke as he ran through the darkness of the jungle. He collided with Sherlock's back, like one might hit a brick wall.

"Sherlock?" he whispered, voice faint as a wisp of spider's web. Sherlock was frozen, transfixed, ears-pricked, as if he witnessed the discourse of the gods,and steadied himself for the war that followed ,swift as the heels of the hell -hounds.

"Can you hear them, John? Here they come,...low howling...like they're starving..."

John stood still, a hand on Sherlock's back,discreetly taking his pulse. His heart was raging inside him, like a caged steer trying to stampede through battlements of stone.

Then he heard them, a low wailing sound, the voices of the damned turned to the cries of the beasts, no longer human, but animal, and having but one consciousness: the instinct to kill.

Sherlock flinched,as he heard their voices, "Sherrrrrlockkk..." they wailed, as human speech was shaped out of dog like yowls.

"Their voices...they're talking to me ,John. The people that I took out...all of them...taking me to hell with them...Saying that it's time to wake up Jim Moriarty, we have bargains to make, hands to shake..."

Sherlock for a moment, trembles, as if undecided. But even now, he knows who he is ,and what he has to do.

"I told you I would not disappoint you!" he calls into the darkness, answering the voices, he hears, only because the poison causes him to hear it. He takes that first step into the known-only-too-well.

John doesn't hear Moriarty and Company, over the din of their voices:

"HELP, DOCTOR!- JACK'S HIT, JACK'S HIT!"

"Man down, man down!"

"YOU WORTHLESS PIECE OF ROASTED FLESH! HE WAS ONLY A KID-AND YOU KILLED HIM, YOU TOOK HIS LEG OFF,AND YOU KILLED HIM!"

John drew a shaky breath, tears in his eyes as hot as the flames he imagined were catching in the vines of the jungle above them.

Out of the mist he sees the shape of young Jack Wright, the soldier who died from complications to the amputation of his left leg.

John was performing said amputation. A kid from Jack's unit, who was his friend, witnessed it all. He tried to assault John, blamed him for it, screamed, began to act erratically, tried to shoot him...

He was discharged shortly thereafter. People said it was because he'd gone batty,and had nothing to do with his trying to kill Doctor Watson.

John blamed himself for the kid's insanity ,as well as the death of young Jack.

These phantoms of the poison were back now, to bring every secret guilty thing out to trial.

While they were walking, there he was, the image of Sebastian Moran.

"It's your fault, maggot flesh! You-if you had taken it all like a man, then there wouldn't have been any guilt to blast out of my brains!" he wailed into the mist, rushing Sherlock with one of the devices of his torment.

"Are you really that delusional, Sebastian?" John heard Sherlock whisper.

"It may not be your fault what became of him. But you COULD have helped ME!" wails Soo Lin Yao.

Sherlock flinches. John has heard her too,and his fingers have encircled Sherlock's arms, holding him lest he take flight.

Her image is changed, to what one looks like after being murdered and buried for years and years.

She comes slowly to them, "You were there...in the building, the night that he came for me...You SHOULD have stopped him, Sherlock! "

She comes slowly to them,and behind her march 7 of the largest of hell's hounds, hounds the size of small elephants, with teeth like swords, rings of smouldering brass pierced through their nostrils, seven horns like bull's horns in their skulls, and the ribs of dead men rattling between their foaming lips.

Sherlock thrusts himself forward to protect John,and John jerks him back behind him, and the two fall down scrapping with each other,and roll down a small hill, and Sherlock hits the back of his head hard on a stone, and is knocked unconcious, and John lays protectively on top of him, as the first wave of the mist-released drug passes over. And he "counts sheep" ,literally,as flocks of bleeding lambs jump over their hideout, baiting the hounds back to the cliffs of darkness form whence they climbed...


	12. Chapter 11: I Will Fear No Evil

**Chapter 11: I Will Fear No Evil~**

There would be a pause that lasted about an hour, between the first wave and the second. The Teacher explained to his colleges that he was calling them "Disturbia's Tides".

John praised God for a momentary reprieve ,to remind himself that this was NOT real, that it was just like Baskerville.

Sherlock would not be so fortunate. He had fallen unconcious,and would wake to terror again, just as he had been doing ever since that fateful day he fell out of the sky.

John sighed, and gently ran a hand over his head, sizing up the damage by feel. Blood encrusted the back of his raven curls,slicking them down, as if he'd put some sort of product in it.

"The kind of hell you've been living in...all this time...Trying to save me..." John muttered, watching his alabaster face, as it did not change.

At least for just a fraction of time, Sherlock could fall into forgetfullness. At least ,if he couldn't gather his thoughts, and somewhat calm his mind, at the very _least _he would be empty. At least he would be hollow ,and still, and silent ,for just a fraction of a moment, the ground -to- fine- powder flakes,like fairy dust, which may remain of his soul, allowed to settle in his stomach ,like glitter in a snow globe.

John leaned closer yet, studying his face, studying every vein that could be seen through translucent skin, imagining the agony of the blood that still ached on its way through those dim-lit passageways to his roasted heart, like trains moving down hot iron tracks of a post-nuclear world.

"My turn." he whispered,voice barely rustling the feathers of sound.

"Tell you the truth, you might be scared. You might have a good reason to be. But I'm not."

He felt his bones harden in him, like Antartica's will.

"They can tear me limb from limb;I'm not afraid. I have no remorse. Made you a promise, and I will keep it. So there."

Sherlock didn't stir. If anything, his emptiness expanded,and John could hear his words echo back to him off the other side, sealing his vow.

Oh, but why did it always feel like he was talking to a stone?...


	13. Chapter 12: For You Are With Me

**Chapter 12: For You Are With Me~**

The mist seeped up from the veins of the earth, and coiled like snakes about Sherlock's body.

John watched as he inhaled it deep, and woke up, in a full-blown attack of sheer terror.

He shrieked, like a cougar, and tore away from John, eyes gone wide, panting like a tiger who's time has come.

The tiger becomes more vicious,as he is dying. India is alive tonight with the memory of a thousand great cats, who died in such valor; their roaring can be heard this night, resonant off the bones of the trees.

"Sherlock!" John called softly, heart twisting inside him, seeing him like this.

"I SEE THEM ,JOHN! " he shouted, and the jungle rang, alive, throbbing with his pain.

He was on all fours ,swaying with the jungle's suddenly violent vertigo.

"I SEE THEM! EVERY. LAST. ONE!"

"Who, Sherlock? Who do you see?"

"The dead, John! All of the people, that died at the hands of Moriarty's criminal network..."

His mouth gaped, his eyes watered-

"I can SEE them ,John! See them as they were ,alive, with the potential of genius! And then-"his mouth falls open, tounge looks black, stained with the blood ,that has welled from around his gums ,when he gnashed his teeth in torment. His lips quiver as if electricity has found a way to invade.

John's heart just might supernova.

"They ...he...I can feel everything he did to them, in my body..." he looks sickened, and John can't take it anymore, his own anxiety being to watch Sherlock's escalate.

Because Sherlock never looked more human than right now.

John whispers his name,and crawls to him,wrapping his arms around his shoulders, presses their foreheads together.

"I've got you..." he says ,as softly as the fall of night.

Sherlock closes his eyes,

" I can hear them..." he hisses,voice a harsh whisper, teeth scraping together in agony.

"You did all you could do...More than enough...You, you just about became ONE of them, Sherlock..."

John presses his friend to lying in his chest. Cradles him ,like one would an infant made of snow, as fragile as if he would melt with a wisp of light falling into his dark world.

"I can hear them,and they will NEVER -shut! up!" he growls,and flinches violently. "Always blaming me, because I couldn't save them. Because I took too long...

The library in the Czech Republic! The hospital bombing in Qatar! THE GENOCIDE OF THE FALLING TRAINS!- My God, John! So many murders, that I solved just one instant too late..."

With a feeling like soaring above the mist,John realized that in another life, when they were home in England, and seated by their own fireplace, they would have this conversation again, that Sherlock would be more open in that transfigured version of himself, and tell him everything.

With a sinking feeling, he realized that he and Sherlock now shared more than the bond they new as the unbeatable crime-solving duo.

Now they would share the bond of soldier's returning from war.

A war so dark that no one else ,in any circle they found themselves, would ever be able to level with them. Would never be able to understand...

John shook the future free from the loom of his thoughts. That would be another uncertain day, out there in the Cosmos, not woven yet into the fabric of Fate.

They only had tonight, here in hell, together again at last.

John cupped Sherlock's face in his hands, and made him look up at him.

"The world we live in is so very dark,yeah? I know...I know. It's...it's ok, though, it's ok. I know you're scared. I know you have survivor's guilt. Everybody does.

And then there's that part of you that did not survive...So you, some how, mourn...yourself...

But don't, don't be scared. Let the dead go bury their dead. Let that part of you that's forever under that marble slab in a London graveyard stay there.

And know that I'm here...I'm right here. We're together now. And I will never leave you, you trust me, yeah? Trust me, Sherlock...I will follow you into your Night,...and everywhere. You will never be alone , hey!-easy..."

Sherlock had wrapped both fists in John's shirt ,and was clinging for dear salvation.

"You,-John-really here?"

"Always..."

With a little chirp of relief, Sherlock again surrendered to unconciousness.

John clutched him close, as he sagged limp as a sack full of bricks in his arms, planning his way out of the jungle...


	14. Chapter 13: Your Rod and Staff

**Chapter 13: Your Rod and Staff~**

In the end, John's plan was nothing short of hoisting Sherlock up on his shoulders,and running for dear life.

Mycroft called it an "elementary solution, to the final problem".

John called it Mycroft-being-a- lazy-git-who-took-too-long-to-send-a-bloody-plane.

Sherlock almost called it quits.

For the last wave, was by far the worst of them all.

John didn't dare look over his shoulder. Was running now, so fast he could feel his bones creaking , like the rusted gates of hell, that were falling down on top of them.

The dead, the living, the damned, and monsters out of hell, whole legions of them were at their heels.

It was an illusion to end all illusions.

Soo Lin Yao, face painted white, cracking a whip ,solid enough that Sherlock could feel it across his shoulders,and screamed with his lips pressed into John's back.

" Home, taking you, home." John puffed ,running blindly ,into the jungle.

He heard the baying of the wolves. Their teeth more like tusks, so long,and white, and sharp, razor sharp.

The both of them could feel themselves stabbed, over a million times, and although it was in their minds,and their was no trauma to their bodies, still the pain they felt was very real, and very great.

Sherlock wrapped himself tightly around John,trying desperately to shield his back from the onslaught.

"Press on, press on, press on."John's thoughts shouted at him,from somewhere away in the smoke.

He saw image after image after image of himself,and Sherlock, falling dead,and being devoured, or murdered by those that gave chase.

He could hear their chant, loud as lions.

"NO MERCY, NO REMORSE. DEATH AND FIRE."

"Oh God!" John gasped, as the din got louder and louder.

"You could leave me, you could save yourself."

"I did NOT come all this way to abandon you to a LSD trip."

"Well, it's not technically a LSD trip...and..."

"Shut up, Sherlock."

"No, listen John. This...I know it's...know it's not real. But it feels real, right? And I may have...this may not be good."

John holds his breath, listening now.

"Ghost People are still out there, John...That's what I mean. You could leave me,and get free of them..."

"Are you trying to tell me you don't think you're going to make it?"

"I'm trying to tell you that I think I'm having a heart attack..."

"Well, lucky for you I'm a doctor..."

* * *

This was a long time coming.

John was actually surprised it had taken Sherlock's heart this long to react this way, given the strain of torture he'd been under.

He stopped running.

"We're almost out now...,Sherlock, I need you to focus on me,..."

He laid him down to start taking his vitals, and try to perform whatever means of medical attention he could immediately without medical supplies.

"Ok, hey,look at me, not at them."

The crowd of hallucinations teemed around them, whips raised.

Sherlock tried to sit up,and cover John,as they began to beat them brutally.

"NO MERCY, NO REMORSE!"

"Sherlock, look at me...not at them..."

John's voice, that one steady sound cutting through the static.

Sherlock looked at John one final time, with his eyes blazing ,and then he gasped painfully,and slipped unconscious ,never to awake ,unless his light guided him back.

"People are gonna talk; you'll just have to deal with it, mate!" John gasped,beginning mouth-to-mouth.

* * *

John had never been so desperate.

"Wake up, come on, come on-this-stupid-SHERLOCK!"

So desperate as to drag Sherlock a few feet by his ankles in-between chest compressions, trying to get him out of the field of the poison.

He could see the very last of the pipes poking out of a tree trunk, naked just to taunt him, clearly marked "FINISH".

"Come on you -bloody idiot!"

He was more dragging him than trying to resuscitate him now.

"Please, Sherlock, we're right here, we're RIGHT here, we can do this, we can go HOME."

John is crying now, stops right in front of the FINISH pipe, and cries, cradling Sherlock to his chest.

"Wake up, for the love of God, Sherlock...Wake up..."

A throat clears out of the chaos.

"Are you going to finish the race, Doctor Watson? You have less than 3 meters left to crawl, considering that is the distance between us, and I am unaffected."

John looks up, suddenly infuriated. "Mycroft BLOODY Holmes. You could have gotten here AGES ago. With some food! Aspirin and nitroglycerin! And now, I might need a defibrillator!"

"Lucky for you I have all of that and more in the truck only 10 meters out of the mist,..."

John scowled, and scooped Sherlock up like a bride, legs dangling awkwardly over one of his arms.

Mycroft would be amused, given other circumstances.

"Will he be alright?"

"Oi, I certainly hope so, given all the trouble it took to get him out of there."

"You're a doctor. Can't you give me more concise information?"

"Alright, hang bedside manners, then! We shock him awake, or he's as good as dead. Stress has gotten to Mr. Invincible at last..."

Mycroft paled, and lead the rest of the way in silence.


	15. Chapter 14: Lead Us Home

**Chapter 14: Lead Us Home~**

Lucky for Mycroft it takes 4 shocks only. Not so very fortunately for Mycroft, Sherlock wakes up swinging ,and breaks his nose.

He comes back to reality, in John's arms, whose hands are carefully smoothing back his wild raven curls, like trying to tame a troubled wind.

"Hey..." John says ,smiling.

"You...you're really here? My eyes, my eyes see it. I am not one to question what my eyes perceive. You are here, so I see you, in some sense. But what do I see, what I want to see, or...the truth?"

"Maybe, for once, them both?"

Mycroft stands up slowly, cracking his nose back in place.

"Mycroft?" Sherlock mutters, and then it all comes back on him hard.

"Right, you sent him into all the MADNESS. Don't ask me to apologize for your nose, because you deserved it, and deserve more that I am in no physical condition to measure out."

"So, you consider us even then?"

"For now. Maybe I will assign you the dubious task of taking our parents to a showing of Les Miserables, as further punishment..."

John laughs, having no idea what that's all about.

"The pain of that will certainly make us even." Mycroft says, swallowing.

Comes and sits beside his brother, and the young doctor holding him in steady arms, the small cot in the back of the truck sagging under all of their weight, as weary of this life as they were.

"Well, Sherlock, we're about to take you home. And I will not be soft with you, for your own good. No one was able to prepare you at the outset for what you would endure on the field. And no one will be able to prepare you for the transition of going back..."

"Back...back to where?"

Joh goes cold at the look in Mycroft's eyes.

"Don't you remember?"

Sherlock stares blankly at the roof. "I ...am a dead man, Mycroft. The geography of the world of you living is fuzzy in my memory now...Where are you taking me back to? Serbia? Turkmenistan? Japan?

Come,don't bore me, I'm already in a state of wasting valuable psychological energy..."

"Home..."Mycroft says, confused, mouth gaping horrified.

"I am SORRY I sent John into the middle of it. But it is terribly childish to drag it out to this extent. Come don't be a fool, Sherlock , of course, it's over now, I'm taking you home."

"I heard you. I am simply asking, what does HOME mean, and where is it located?!"

Mycroft scoffs, John lays a hand on his knee.

"He...he's serious." John closes his eyes tight,and looks up at Mycroft again apologetically, "In Serbia, he..he deleted..."

Mycroft understands now.

"Oh, this transition...will be far more difficult than first we feared."

"Well, are missions supposed to be fun and games?ANSWER THE BLOODY QUESTION!"

John steadies Sherlock, who is getting almost violent. Mycroft at last understands that his little brother is broken in more ways than he could ever compute,and it will be a feat of epic proportions putting him back together again...

"You remember Baker Street? You and me, the thrill of the hunt, blood pumping through your veins? Just the two of us...against the world?" John asks ,voice soft, so very soft.

Sherlock looks at him wide-eyed, and slowly ,very ,very slowly, shakes his head "No".

John swallows. "You don't? What about Mrs. Hudson,...Greg Lestrade, Molly?..."

Hopefully, ever-so-hopefully, John thinks he sees recognition in his eyes.

Then he shakes his head, even more faintly, "no"...

John covers his mouth, and swallows, trying not to cry.

"Come here..." he whispers almost inaudibly, and pulls him close, rocking him back and forth.

Mycroft looks to the sky, "Heaven help us..." he whispers , and then says to the driver.

"Set us en route for England. London, England ,Sherlock that is where we are going. England...the country where you were born."

"What is my mission there?" Sherlock asks, sheepishly.

"R and R?" John says incredulously, with an anxious glance at Mycroft.

"We hope. " he says, and lays his head against the wall of the truck as the engine hums with life.

**~To Be Continued~**


End file.
